| Parent company | Eagle Publishing |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1947 |
| Founder | Henry Regnery |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Headquarters location | Washington, D.C. |
| Distribution | Perseus Distribution |
| Nonfiction topics | conservatism |
| Official website | www.regnery.com |
Regnery Publishing in Washington, D.C., is a publisher which specializes in conservative books characterized on their website as "contrary to those of 'mainstream' publishers in New York."[1] Since 1993, Regnery Publishing has been a division of Eagle Publishing, which also owns the weekly magazine Human Events. Regnery is currently led by President Marjory Ross, who had previously served as Vice President under President Al Regnery, son of the company's founder, until 1997.
Regnery has published books by authors such as former Republican Party Chairman Haley Barbour, Ann Coulter, former Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Newt Gingrich, columnist Michelle Malkin, Islamic jihad specialist Robert Spencer, pundit David Horowitz, and Barbara Olson.
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Regnery Publishing is the second publishing company founded by Henry Regnery. The first Henry Regnery Company was founded in Chicago in 1947 and sold in 1977. Henry Regnery then founded Regnery Publishing Inc. as a separate company.[2]
After helping to found Human Events as a weekly newsletter, Henry Regnery began publishing monthly pamphlets and books. A German-American, Regnery had studied in Germany for two years and, while not sympathetic to Nazism, was always very sympathetic to Germans. Some of the first pamphlets he published, including a reprint of a speech by University of Chicago President Robert M. Hutchins, criticized the harsh treatment of Germans and Japanese both in popular attitudes and in postwar administration of the former Axis countries.[3]
Regnery published the pamphlets and some books under the name of Human Events. He began publishing under his own name in September 1947. The first book published by Henry Regnery Publishers was by socialist Victor Gollancz who ran the Left Book Club in Britain. A man of Jewish heritage, Gollancz was appalled at the bombing of German civilians late in the war and by the treatment of the country afterward. Gollancz published In Darkest Germany in Britain but was unable to find an American publisher for his unpopular ideas. He approached Regnery, who agreed to publish it. Regnery subsequently published the U.S. edition of Our Threatened Values by Gollancz.[3]
Regnery's third book was The Hitler in Our Selves, by Max Picard. Other early books included The German Opposition to Hitler by Hans Rothfels and The High Cost of Vengeance (1949) by Freda Utley which was critical of the Allies' air campaign and post-war occupation. Utley's book was the first Regnery book to be reviewed in The New York Times, where it was excoriated. Reinhold Niebuhr gave it a positive review in The Nation magazine.[3] But not all of Regnery's output during the period was so "highbrow," as one of the company's better sellers in 1975 was SuperJock: The loud, frantic, nonstop world of a rock radio DJ by popular WCFL disc jockey Larry Lujack.
The company was founded as a nonprofit corporation. Regnery later wrote that it was initially organized that way, "not because I had any ideological objection to profits, but because, as it seemed to me then, and does still, in matters of excellence the market is a poor judge. The books that are most needed are often precisely those that will have only a modest sale." The Internal Revenue Service forced the company to be reorganized as a for-profit concern on March 1, 1948. Regnery hired his first few employees that year.[3]
Regnery published some of the first and most important books of the postwar American conservative movement. "[I]t was a measure of the grip that liberal-minded editors had on American publishing at the time that Regnery, which was founded in 1947, was one of only two houses known to be sympathetic to conservative authors", according to Henry Regnery's 1996 obituary in The New York Times.
In 1951, Regnery published God and Man at Yale, the first book written by William F. Buckley, Jr.. At that time, Regnery had a close affiliation with the University of Chicago and published classics for the Great Books series at the University, but he lost the contract as a result of publishing Buckley's book.[2]
In 1953, Regnery published The Conservative Mind, a seminal book for Post World War II American conservatism, as well as books by Albert J. Nock, James J. Kilpatrick, James Burnham and Whittaker Chambers. He also published paperback editions of literary works by authors such as novelist Wyndham Lewis and the poets T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound.[2]
In 1954, Regnery published McCarthy and His Enemies by William F. Buckley and L. Brent Bozell Jr. "Although Mr. Buckley [...] had criticized the senator for 'gross exaggerations', Mr. McCarthy said he would not dispute the merits of the book with the authors", according to a news article in The New York Times. While criticizing McCarthy, the book was sympathetic to him (and in fact was harsher on McCarthy's critics than it was on the senator for making false allegations[4]), and McCarthy attended a reception for the authors.[5]
In the early 1950s, Regnery published two books by Robert Welch, who went on to found the John Birch Society in 1958. In May God Forgive Us, Welch criticized influential foreign-policy analysts and policymakers and accused many of working to further Communism as part of a conspiracy.[6] In 1954, Regnery published Welch's biography of John Birch, an American Baptist missionary in China who was killed by Chinese Communists after he became a U.S. intelligence officer in World War II.
Regnery was the first publisher of the psychological biography Sybil, which was reprinted numerous times by larger publishers, and eventually made into a film.[7] They also published Coal Miner's Daughter, Loretta Lynn's autobiography, in 1976, which was the basis for the film.
In the 1980s, Alfred S. Regnery, son of Henry Regnery, took control of the company. In the 1990s, the Regnery family sold the publishing company to Phillips Publishing International, which put the book publishing company into its Eagle Publishing subsidiary, which also publishes the weekly Human Events.[8][9] Alfred Regnery has subsequently left his post as President of Regnery Publishing to become the publisher of The American Spectator magazine.[10] His books are now published by Threshold Editions, the conservative imprint of CBS-owned Simon & Schuster which is run by Republican strategist Mary Matalin.[11] He still holds a seat on the Regnery Board of Directors. Pat Sajak also is a member of the board. Alex Novak, son of political columnist Robert Novak, is director of marketing.
Regnery has become noteworthy, apart from authors of its books, because of its penchant for political controversy with a high profile on the national stage. It recently launched a series of books titled "The Politically Incorrect Guide to" (multiple subjects), confronting what it conceives to be the assumptions of the nation's elites, sometimes negatively described as political correctness. The Politically Incorrect Guides have often been referred to by their backronym PIGS by supporters and opponents alike (Regnery's logo for the series features a pig's head). Former Regnery officials have described its marketing strategy as getting its conservative books condemned by the New York Times, generating very large sales to conservatives as a result.
Regnery books have often been the subject of controversy.
Regnery published Unlimited Access: An FBI Agent Inside The Clinton White House (1996) by Gary Aldrich, which Max Blumenthal, writing in The American Prospect, claimed "... painted images of Hillary Clinton hanging crack pipes on the White House Christmas tree".[2] Aldrich had written about an incident where Ms. Clinton ordered a batch of student artwork hung on the tree without examining it for suitability.[3]
In June 2004, Regnery agreed to publish Unfit for Command by former Swift Boat Veteran John O'Neill and veteran author Dr. Jerome Corsi. Television advertisements about Presidential candidate John Kerry's criticisms of U.S. soldiers and recounting of his own military record in Vietnam were unveiled nationwide at about the same time as Unfit for Command was released, creating shortages of the book in bookstores nationwide. The book exceeded 1 million copies in print.
The Kerry campaign demanded that Regnery cease publication and distribution of Unfit for Command, saying there were inaccuracies in the book about Kerry's war record and anti-war activities at home. Regnery responded by offering to print and distribute a reply book by Kerry, suggesting "Winter Soldier" on the same subject matter that Kerry authored in the 1970s.
In describing Regnery's position in the publishing world, Nicholas Confessore, then writer for the liberal American Prospect, said the following:
In November 2007, Jerome Corsi, Bill Gertz, Robert (Buzz) Patterson, Joel Mowbray and Richard Miniter--five authors whose works have been published by Regnery--filed a lawsuit against the company. It claimed that Regnery "orchestrates and participates in a fraudulent, deceptively concealed and self-dealing scheme to divert book sales away from retail outlets and to wholly owned subsidiary organizations" of Eagle Publishing, Regnery's parent corporation. Miniter said that meant that although he received about $4.25 a copy when his books sold in a bookstore or through an online retailer, he only earned about 10 cents a copy when his books sold through the Conservative Book Club or other Eagle-owned channels.[13]
On January 30, 2008, a federal judge dismissed all eight counts of the lawsuit because the authors had signed contracts with Regnery which included mandatory arbitration clause in their contracts.[14][15] The authors have sought arbitration with the company.[14][16] In December 2011, the American Arbitration Association released its ruling on the arbitration case brought by three of the five authors (Miniter, Corsi and Mowbray) against Regnery. The ruling found in favor of Regnery on all counts, saying specifically: "the arbitrator finds that the Claimants' allegations of breach of contract, breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing, and breach of fiduciary duty are without merit and said claims are hereby denied. The arbitrator further finds that Claimants' allegations of fraud on the part of Regnery are similarly without merit and are hereby denied." The three authors in this case ("Claimants") had accused Regnery of depriving them of royalties by diverting books from the retail trade into other channels, particularly those owned by parent company Eagle Publishing. But the arbitrator dismissed all those accusastions as without merit. In examining the charges made against Regnery, the arbitrator's ruling stated the following: "Claimants have not produced evidence that a single volume was "diverted" improperly or fradulently by Eagle Publishing or Regnery... Claimants allege with specificity their charge ... but fall woefully short in their proof." The final ruling by the arbitrator continued: "Based upon the evidence it is clear that the Claimants books that were not sold or distributed were destroyed... There is no proof that Regnery or Eagle Publishing surreptitiously sold returned volumes and thereby deprived Claimants of royalties to which they were otherwise entitled.... There simply was no evidence adduced by Claimants to support that Regnery acted in bad faith or unfairly. Their claim that Regnery diverted books from the retail market improperly simply does not withstand scrutiny when all of the evidence is considered."